If I only had a DeLorean
by Adventures of the Blue Car
Summary: The trilogy from the point of view of Farmer Peabody's Scarecrow that Marty runs over. This was originally a comic I created a long time ago.
1. Spanner in the Works

Thursday, August 5th, 1982- 

The regular industrial workings of the DeLorean Motorcar Plant in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland were about to have a spanner thrown in the works. 

A scarecrow, of all things, stood aloft on the rail walkway above the assembly line and proceeded to drop a spanner from his straw hand. The metal tool spun through the factory air, even managing to sparkle by catching the fluorescent light before smashing into the gears and cogs of the machinery. This caused the DeLorean conveyer belt to grind to a high pitched halt. A few cars smashed into each other, and others toppled off the assembly belt. 

The rattled Irish workers looked up at the out of place specter who had the expression of angry satisfaction creased over his burlap face. 

Security was called and after an upheaval of straw and some well placed obscenities, the scarecrow was soon under the hot lights of the Plant's interrogation/break room. The bright bulb caused the rest of the room to fall away into darkness, leaving the attention squarely on the scarecrow. He sat with his arms crossed, dressed in a red flannelette shirt, denim overalls and topped off by a straw hat. 

In comparison- Mr. Sinclair, a private detective retained by the DeLorean Motor Company, wore a dark trench coat. He had dealt with Irish protestors, the odd snooping journalist and the ever present Guinness intoxicated mechanics, but it was the first time he had sat opposite a man made of straw. 

"You're sure to be in a lot of bother," the slim Irishman began, slinging his coat over the back of his chair to psychologically manipulate the scarecrow into thinking the hot lights were very hot. "How did you get past the front gate?" 

"I'm made of straw." The scarecrow plainly answered. 

"Ah, Mister funnyman," the interrogation/break continued. "Alright then, how are you made of straw and alive in the same instance?" 

The scarecrow yanked off his hat revealing his giant bald, except for a few straw hairs sprouting through, burlap head. "I have a theory about that little matter- Farmer Peabody bought my clothes from a Thrift store. I cannot be certain, but I have a feeling they belonged to a dead man." 

Mr. Sinclair scratched his head, "you're not telling me you are possessed by a ghost because of haunted flannelette, are you? Because I've heard saner yarns from the Guinness intoxicated mechanics down stairs."

"I'm not finished yet. I was once out protecting Farmer Peabody's corn when lightning struck the pole I was on. That also might have contributed to the beauty of life." The burlap face creased a smile. 

"And then you got an urge to sabotage our DeLoreans?" asked Sinclair. 

"Oh no," answered the straw man. "That agenda came much later- back in good old 1955." 


	2. Good old 1955

The scarecrow's mind rustled back to the night a metallic beast rocketed out of thin air. The contraption plowed through the stalks before plowing into him, launching his straw body onto the car's hood. The kid behind the wheel screamed, but the scarecrow screamed louder. 

"I was then tossed onto the ground, hatless. My straw hat must have become wedged under the windshield wipers," explained the scarecrow. 

"Wait, wait, wait." Sinclair waved his hand. "You said all this took place in the 50's? Impossible. The DeLorean is brand new." 

"I haven't finished." The scarecrow pounded his straw fist on the table. "I came around some time later, twisted and disheveled like the time Farmer Peabody's cow escaped the barn. I went searching for that futuristic car, and found it, about a mile down the road." 

The scarecrow stood on the side of the darkened, quiet country road and watched as a tow-truck loaded up the metallic car from behind a housing billboard. 

"I followed the truck to a mansion in town. The garage window was lit up with activity. I peeked through the window..." 

The scarecrow stared into the garage and immediately caught sight of the car. A white haired man stood next to it, opening a suitcase on the hood.

"So these are all my personal belongings?" he asked the kid who stood by the television set in the corner. The man looked over a few futuristic objects and a pornographic magazine before snatching the straw hat from under the wiper. "And look at this scarecrow hat!" He then proceeded to sing, 'if I only had a brain.' 

The song and dance number from the old man angered the scarecrow to no end. "My hat became a lost cause at that moment. These guys were loons. I walked back to the farm." 

"And then you waited 27 years to sabotage our factory?" asked Sinclair, disbelieving the scarecrow's story with every passing minute. 

"No. I sulked around for a week, feeling naked without my hat. I went to visit my girlfriend, Sheryl, who guarded apple trees at a nearby orchid. But she had also had a run-in with the dreaded DeLorean." 

Standing speechless on the grassy hill, he looked down at the parked DeLorean atop the female scarecrow. In a cluster of straw feet and tripping denim legs, he tumbled down to the field and helped her up. He asked if she was okay. 

"Russell, you won't believe what happened!" 

"Try me," he said. 

"Wait, your name is Russell?" Sinclair interrupted. 

"What of it?" Russell the scarecrow glared at him. 

"No, nothing. Continue." Sinclair coughed to hide his amusement at the simple name for a talking straw man. 

Sheryl continued her story to Russell; "I was just standing here, guarding the apples when this spaceship flew down right on top of me. A crazy old codger with a cane jumped out and headed for town." 

"I'm sorry to interrupt again but," Sinclair began. "Your girlfriend was alive too? Was she also struck by lightning or dressed in deceased clothes?" 

"Would you let me finish?" Russell shouted. Sinclair put his hands up to surrender his previous question. 

"Was this crazy old codger wearing a red shirt and plaid trousers?" Russell asked Sheryl. 

"Yeah, how do you know?" she asked. 

"He's behind you and he doesn't look too happy." Russell said before he and his girlfriend deflated their expressions and played dead. The old man marched hunchbacked to the pair and plucked Russell up into the air. He carried the straw body over to a white cylinder that sat on the car's rear roof and flipped it open, it had written on it the words- 'Mr. Fusion.' 

The next thing Russell knew, he was being stuffed into the cylinder in the most painful way. The old man's cane top beat him down the chute until he sat, cramped and compressed in a compartment filled with aluminum trash, spoilt fruit and fast food debris from a place called 'Burger King.' 


	3. Far cry from Peabody Farm

"I felt the car actually lift off the ground, we were flying. I wasn't scared, not even when the sonic booms echoed around me. Not until a rumble shook the tank I was in and sucked me out of what I imagined to be the back exhaust pipe. Amazingly, I landed on the ground in one piece." Russell recounted to Sinclair, who wasn't about to interrupt again. 

"I was in a futuristic wonderland. A far cry from the Peabody farm." Russell remembered walking under freeways of flying cars and passing children playing on flying devices. 

"I was enjoying the marvels of the 21st century. Well, I was, until I met Scarebot who stood next to the Hill Valley Museum of Performing Arts and Heroin Injecting Facility." 

The Scarebot was a metallic counterpart to Russell's form. He stood menacing in front of a sign that read- 'The Last Scarecrow.' 

"What does it mean? The last scarecrow?" Russell asked the mechanical being, which activated it's voice recognition circuit. 

"Crows became extinct in 2012- it turns out the Mayan prophecy was meant for our feathered enemies." Scarebot began in a monotone, singsong accent. "All of the old scarecrows were then burnt. I, however, was a prototype that they didn't want to destroy. They thought it much better to cart me off from town to town as a sideshow act, a freak." 

Russell was shocked. He thanked the robot and wished him all the best. He retreated to a park bench in the town square. "My race had been wiped out, along with my very purpose in life- the crows. I was obsolete, a shadow of the past with no way of returning home." 

"I assume you didn't stay in the future?" asked Sinclair, sarcastically. 

"No. I guess it was fate that I would once again encounter the dreaded DeLorean, along with the man who stole my hat." Russell answered, remembering the sight of the white haired man, dressed in yellow, leaning against the back of the DeLorean as he read a futuristic, coloured newspaper through a mirrored visor over his eyes. 

Russell crept around the side of the car, slinked through the opened gull-winged door and hid behind the passenger seat. Hoping that the song and dance man, with a fondness for the Wizard of Oz showtunes, would return to the '50's. 

"I should have just sat there in the back and waited. But when he started whistling 'if I only had a brain', I must admit I snapped." 

Russell jumped at the driver as he was taking off. Loosing control of the DeLorean, they skidded onto the roof of a Burger King Fly-Thru. 

"Who in the name of Galileo Galilei are you?" the long haired man yelled, raising his reflective visor from his eyes. 

"I then told him the same story I just told you." Russell explained to Sinclair. "His name was Doc, it was his DeLorean time machine." Russell said, before a frown creased over his face. "I told him how devastated I was." 

Russell sat in the front seat of the illegally parked DeLorean. "Humans have murdered all scarecrows. Genocide fills your utopian future air." 

The Doc then placed a well timed hand on Russell's shoulder. "Being human isn't confined to flesh and bones. Love, fear, and intelligence make up a human. You are no less of a man, in fact- this future belongs to you. Your enemies, the crows, have gone the way of the Mayans. Now come on, I'll fly you home." 


	4. End Game

As Russell said goodbye to the Doc on Farmer Peabody's moonlit farm, the Doc smiled and reached into the glove box. "Wait, I have a gift for you, Russ."

Russell was intrigued, craning his head to see what the object could be. Intrigued turned to breathless happiness as the Doc handed the scarecrow his straw hat back. 

"Thank you, Doc. So, where are you going now? Back to the future?" Russell asked as he put his hat over a tearing up face. 

"Sort of," Doc answered. "30 years ahead. I need to warn a friend about his kids." 

The DeLorean's door hissed shut and the magnificent vehicle sped off and vanished in a dazzling display of light. Unfortunately, fire trails erupted the grass in a blaze that enveloped the very flammable Russell. He ran screaming to the barn and managed to put out his fire with the process of cow milking. 

"So you put the fire out, got your hat back and all was well. Is that the end of this fantastic tale?" Sinclair asked, trying not to make his glance at the clock on the wall the most obvious move. 

"All was not well!" Russell shouted. "I found that out when I went to the apple orchid to see Sheryl." 

On the shadowy orchid field, Russell found bits of Sheryl's dress and clumps of straw scattered around bicycle tyre tracks. Sad at first, he then grew angry and followed the tracks down the cricket chirping country road to the housing billboard. 

"So why aren't you sabotaging a bicycle factory somewhere? Why are you here?" Sinclair grew ever more impatient. 

"Because there, on that drizzling country road, I saw the flying DeLorean. The Doc must have been the bike rider who was involved in the hit and peddle of my girlfriend. A lightning bolt took care of any unclaimed karma there, the DeLorean disintegrated before my eyes." 

Russell then leaned back on his chair; "I then spent almost 30 years biding my time, waiting for the opportunity to destroy the very car that caused nothing but disaster. I read time travel books about the grandfather paradox, but that doesn't apply if I destroy the DeLorean."

"Why not?" Sinclair asked, hoping he was on the verge of wrapping up the interrogation/break.

"Because the DeLorean isn't my grandfather." Russell answered, coldly. 

"True, the grandfather paradox is all about preventing your existence by killing your grandfather. But a similar thing would apply here- you would erase your reason for destroying the DeLorean if your girlfriend never died, thus a paradox would be created." Sinclair rattled off, as if he were an expert on the subject.

"You may be right." Russell rested his burlap head on his fist of straw.

"Not to worry. Though true you came here to Northern Ireland to throw a wrench in our machines, but we'll have the assembly line back up and running this afternoon." Sinclair grinned. 

"Not the best laid plan, I guess." Russell shrugged. 

"Alright Mr. Russell, I appreciate you telling me your story and waving your right for an attorney." Sinclair stood and grabbed his coat from his chair. "I'll have to have a quick talk to the boss but, considering the circumstances, I think we can let you go with a warning- the general Guinness-intoxication policy." 

Sinclair left the room and the lonely scarecrow. 

Through the break room mirror, a lanky man with silver hair stood, smoking a cigarette with firm concentration on the scarecrow saboteur. Sinclair entered the narrow room on the opposite side of the one-way mirror. "So, Mr. DeLorean. How much did you hear?" 

"Enough." he quickly responded, still staring at Russell.

"I'm thinking... seat padding?" Sinclair suggested, joining his boss' view of Russell. 

"Mr. Sinclair, our friend in there is a walking, talking straw man. I think we can find a better use for him other than butt padding." 

Soon after, Russell was locked into the driver's seat of a DeLorean. "This seatbelt is choking me!" he complained to a Guinness-breath mechanic. 

"Mate, you're going to want it to be tight where you're going." 

"Where am I going?" Russell asked. 

The gull-wing door slammed shut and a robotic arm revved up the car before it released it. Through the empty factory, the DeLorean sped along unabated for a few seconds before smashing into a concrete pillar. Russell had discovered a fate worse than scaring crows. He was now a crash test dummy. He wondered if the Mayans had included the DeLorean in their doomsday prophecy. Fortunately for him, the futuristic cars would find extinction many years prior to the crows.


End file.
